Tag Archives: construction

Selling items is a cake walk for people who know their product well. Guys who can speak for hours on a particular product are also confident of selling the item without much hassle. They are confident that they will be able to answer any questions that are thrown at them. Their confidence about the product speaks how knowledgeable they are and how easily they can convince people to buy the item.

Salesmanship is all about the confidence you have on yourself and the product that you are selling. If the product that you are asked to sell is not quality stuff you will problems while pitching it because you know at the back of your mind that you are not speaking the whole truth. You are disclosing facts that the customer needs to know but there is very high possibility that the customer will get back to you with complaints. This will pull down your confidence level while pitching the commodity. This is why you should never engage in things that are of inferior quality because it will come back to you and you may lose your customer forever.

A sales man who sells heavy equipment needs to be very precise with the features and the shortcomings of the machine. He/she just can’t afford to misinform his customer about the machine. In case, he/she is asked a question that is technical and he does not have an answer for it then he should state that he will get the answer for him rather than saying something that may sound good at that point in time but when the beans are spilled he may get into a problem.

Technical knowledge of heavy equipment is not necessary for a salesman but it is always better to know more about the stuff you are selling than asking the customer to give you time to get back with an answer. It somehow also puts you in a bad light and the customer may wonder if you at all know anything about the machine. Remember there are many other heavy equipment salesman who are in hunt of customers. In a situation like this, you can’t afford to lose a prospect with your ignorance for the machine.

Spend time with engineers to know a bit of technical stuff. No one can tell you about heavy equipment better than an engineer who works on building machines. If you can’t catch hold of an engineer which in most of the time is difficult to get through to them you can always find a heavy equipment mechanic who will be the next best person to help you explore your knowledge on heavy equipment. You can watch him work on a machine and ask questions. Apart from this, you can also watch videos on internet that will impart you information about different types of heavy equipment. These things will really help you gain lot of information about machines and this in turn will help you gain the confidence to sell the product.

Having your own property is something that every person desires of. Those, who live in rented apartments, will certainly understand the desire to have their own house or apartment. That is the reason; the real estate industry is constantly flourishing and will never be out of business.

Builders and small scale real estate businessmen, therefore, are continuously coming up with new projects and ideas for the potential buyers. These construction choices are many in number. The most common construction projects include –

Residential apartments

Bungalows and condos

Commercial buildings

Malls and shops.

Amongst these, the most popular constructions are the residential apartments. Everyone desires to have a personal property, but few can own a big house. However, apartments are way more affordable. That is the reason, why there is always a demand for residential apartments.

Builders construct residential apartments more:

Due to this increased demand of the residential apartments, the builders make these residential apartments more than any other type of construction. Besides, home loans are easily approved for the residential apartments. Hence, the buyers are keener to buy these over the other types of real estate options.

Profit associated with constructing residential apartments:

If you too are thinking of trying your luck in the real estate business and want to construct a residential building, this is an ideal time for that. However, before you do so, you must understand the factors that you should be taking care of.

Construction business is a very profitable one, provided you know how to proceed in it. If you take the right steps, you will be able to gain huge profits in a single go. If you take the wrong steps, you might not be able to sell your apartments easily to potential buyers.

Hire the best construction equipment:

Construction equipment is one of the most important factors that you need to consider before starting your business. Without the construction equipment, you will not be able to complete the project fast and this will hinder your profit. To make sure that the profit is high, it is always a good idea to own the construction equipment. You can choose the second hand equipment for reducing the cost. There are many construction equipment dealers that deal in new or old construction equipment. If you have a limited budget, you can always start by hiring the equipment. The more you save on the construction equipment, the higher will be your profit margin for the residential apartments.

Promotion:

Once you have started your residential apartment building project, proper promotion or advertisement is a must. The more you advertise, the higher are your chances of getting potential buyers easily and fast. Always make sure that you make use of the free online advertisement platforms and forums for this purpose. This will reduce the price of advertisement and increase your profit.

Along with these two important and basic factors, it is also important that you start the project in a well-developed or developing place, so that it is easier for you to sell the residential apartments for a profitable price.

Successes in business are hard to come and especially when you do not like to do a work and are compelled to do for money it will not last for long. There will be a time sooner or later when you will run out of patience and you will start doing errors. Those errors will undoubtedly cost you a lot and perhaps may also cost you your company. Therefore one should not indulge in a business that he is getting involved for monetary benefits only. There should definitely be more to it or else it will turn out to be a big failure in the long run. So before you take the decision to get into a business there should be few questions that you should ask to yourself and only if you get a very clear answer for them that you should venture out.

Do you really want to get into a business:-

If you like a particular kind of work, you need not open a business for that. The construction industry is a pretty vast industry. You have different genres of work that you can get into. So it is crucial for you to know if you really want to start a business of your own or simply get employed to a big construction company and fulfill your dream job. While you get into a business you also need to be ready for a lot of hardships and only if you are ready to face them that you should take the move or else you can still work in a construction company if you are so attached to the genre of work and you love it from the core of your heart.

Are you ready to sacrifice your short term happiness:-

In a construction business you have to come across a lot of hardships for which you need to devote your time and energy to deal with it. While you do that you are unable to give time to your family friends and most importantly to yourself. This business will demand you to compromise a bit on your happiness and this is when your love for the work will play a crucial role. If you really feel that you should be a part of the business then it will automatically drive you to work for extended hours or else you will feel frustrated and will give it up.

Your love for the work will keep your passion alive:-

To achieve success in any form of work and not necessarily only in a business, one should be passionate about what he is doing. The construction sector also wants you to be passionate about your work and this will ultimately yield result to you. Lack of passion will be of no use and you will find losing your interest from your work. This will also affect your productivity and if you are the boss of your business then it will definitely have a negative impact on it.

For a salesman, creating a bond with his customer is very crucial. What is more crucial is to maintain that bond. It is not an easy task to set up a relationship in the first place. No one likes salesman. They feel that they get too pushy to sell their stuff and this is why people often try to avoid them. In such a situation, it becomes quite difficult for a salesman to even break the ice. He has to struggle a lot to just have a small chat and to be allowed to talk a bit about what he is selling. People who are into selling heavy equipment have to struggle enormously to just fix an appointment. People who have the authority to take decisions regarding procuring of heavy equipment in a construction company are really hard to get by and therefore it make no sense to meet any other person and talk about the stuff.

To begin is always difficult:-

To fix a meeting with the person in the construction company who can take decision if the company will procure machines or not is in itself a difficult task. However, that is how you begin your job. You have to keep calling them and persuade them to meet at least once so that you get the opportunity to present them your stuffs. They may be using a particular brand but if you have something better to offer, they will definitely give it a try. Once you meet them in person, try not to be pushy. You can speak about your product and let them decide if they want to go ahead with it. If you do not see them buying your product try to call them on occasions like their birthdays or anniversaries. If possible give them some gifts on such occasions. This is how you begin your relationship with your client.

Talk about different machines that you sell:-

It is important that you talk about different heavy equipment that you sell. For this it is imperative that you try and know few things about their business and what types of heavy equipment do they require. Once you have those details with you, it becomes simpler to pitch the products. This shows that you have done your homework and anything that sounds to be beneficial to the client will be always appreciated by them. You have to let them know that you can provide them with any heavy equipment that they require for their business. You have to try to become the sole point of contact between the demand and supply of machines. Do not restrict your focus to just heavy equipment but also its ancillaries.

Maintain this relationship that has been formed on solid grounds:-

Once you have already formed a bonding with your client it is crucial that you do everything to preserve it. Never give your client the opportunity to complain. Always be ready to serve them and be pro-active at all times. Also do offer them discounts on machines. That will only help you in strengthening your bonding.

Construction industry requires different types of heavy equipment for various types of works. They can’t limit their use to just one kind of machine for all the work. They have to bring in different heavy equipment that are capable of doing certain specialized work. For instance, you can’t make use of a loader for grading purpose. You have to use a grader for that work. Simultaneously, you can’t use any heavy equipment other than a water truck to spray water on the jobsite to contain the dust on the site. In the same way, when you are constructing a highway there are few heavy equipments that you need the most; without which you just can’t get the act right. You need a roller to crush the stuffs and make the road smooth and plain. Similarly, you also need an excavator at the beginning of the highway construction. Perhaps it all starts with an excavator which comes in handy for lot many activities.

A crawler excavator is perhaps the best heavy equipment that a contractor who engages in highway construction can have. A crawler excavator is quite similar to any other excavator which is exclusively used for excavating earth and rock and then loading them onto dump trucks. It basically has a boom which is attached to the front of the machine. At the end of the book, you will have a bucket with or without claws which is extensively used to pull out mud. The cabin in which the operator sits and operates the machine is just right above the undercarriage and is set on a rotating platform. The undercarriage of the machine has wheels or tracks which help the machine to move without losing grip. The attachment in a crawler excavator can be changed as per the requirement of the business. This means that you can now select from a range of options of attachments that you feel will get the work completed in lesser time.

The operator working on the excavator should be highly skilled and experienced as you can’t have someone who has little or no experience in highway construction. Operators who have worked for at least 5 years in constructing small roads can be signed up for highway construction. They should be under the supervision of senior operators who have loads of experience in constructing highways. Constructing highways is a tough job and it takes years for operators to clear the ground for the next level.

A contractor who has taken up the job of excavating should have more than 3 excavators working at a time on the site. They should set up a point till where the excavation work will be carried out and also a deadline should be given to the operators to make sure that the work is done within the given timeframe. Excavating work should be done in a phased manner and not dig up the entire place at one go. Once the excavating work is done, it should pave way for other machines to complete their part of job.

We have often encountered a situation wherein we are reprimanded for the non-performance of the entire team. Especially if you are the person who is in charge of the team and if your team is not able to perform as per the expectation of the company, you get to hear the nasty stuff from your boss. Well, we do not like to fall in such a situation but things always do not work as we want it to. Now let’s take this situation as an instance. You have a boss who is not at all grumpy and always loves to stay in a pleasant mood. He gets to know that your team is not doing well and therefore summons you. To your surprise you see him not yelling at you but trying to know what could be the possible reason for the team’s non-performance. He tries to set up an environment where you feel like discussing things with him and finally coming to a conclusion on how to deal with things.

Well this is how things should be when you are the owner of a mighty construction company. In order to get things done, you should keep your mind calm and try to see things from an angle that others do not. You will get to know the cause of the problem only when you sit for a discussion with the person who heads the department. When you see all the departments doing well other than one, it suggests that there is inevitable some problem associated with that team and you got to get to the bottom of the issue. Unless you unearth the problem, you may find things not going well in that department and soon you may see issues pervading to other departments as well.

Understand their grievances before you react:-

We normally have the tendency of over-reacting before we know what has led to a problem. The moment we see things have not worked as we want them to, the first thing we do is over-react on the situation and then once we calm down, we hear the problem. Well, what we should be doing is the opposite. Listening is an art and when you are running a big construction company, you should be master this art first. Listen to the problem first before you react to it. Understand the position of your fellow workers and try to make things simple for them. Do not exert pressure to get any work done from them. That will be a temporary solution but issues will brew up soon and then it may be out of your control.

Change in plan of action may work:-

One of the most suitable methods to deal with the issue of nonperformance is to change the action plan. Do things a bit differently and it may work for you. Not everything happens the way you want them to but changing your way to get the work done might help.

When you are the best in performing an activity that has good demand in the market you will never find yourself short of opportunities. You will be loved in your organization for your good work and will always remain a valued employee. Now this is what we all want to become at the end of the day. A person who will be known for his wonderful piece of work and respected for his job is probably the dream of many. On the basis of your experience and your performance you get rise in your pay. Your performance is assessed at the end of each year and then you are given some points. On this basis of those points you are given a raise in your package. For people who want to earn more as they feel that they have the capacity to work harder, they always have an option to become a freelancer. A freelancer is the one who is responsible for his job and is also his own boss. He does not have anybody to fire him (other than the person for whom he is working).

Heavy equipment operator who has loads of experience in the construction industry working with all sorts of machines can have a great future becoming a freelancer. As long as he knows what he is doing and how to get it done he has every chance to earn handsomely being a part of the construction industry. So if you are a person who has spent almost all his life working on heavy equipment, try to move to the next level and become heavy equipment operator. Finding projects will not be a problem if at all you are known to people in your business circle. You only have to pervade the message that you also work as a freelancer and you will see people coming to you with projects.

Set up a website:-

If you have already thought of become a freelancer the best way to start is by creating your website. You may dealt all your life with machines but now you also have to work a bit on tech savvy stuffs. This will take you closer to become a full scale freelancer. Once you become a full scale/fulltime freelancer you do not have to stick to your salaried job. You can let that go and simply focus on your business. However, to make that a reality you have to start with your website. Fill in everything that you know about yourself. The companies that you have worked with and the kinds of machines that you have operated should be stated in the website. People should know about your qualities which will help you to get work from them.

You can work as a freelancer with your current employer:-

When you decide to become a freelancer, it does not mean that you no longer can work with your current employer. It only means that you will not be salaried and will be paid as per the terms of the contract which may be more than what you usually get. However, you have to put in more hours of work in that case. You will still find that to be satisfying and enjoyable.

You take up a big project, complete the work on time but forget to pay your contractors their dues. This can lead you to some serious problems in the future. If you do not pay your contractor for their work, they have every right to place a lien on the construction project and you will then find it difficult to get a completion certificate. More to this, banks will not entertain you when it comes to refinancing or for that matter any sort of financial assistance. Banks do not get into projects that have issues. They want projects whose title are clear and have no issues whatsoever. It can cause several other issues to the constructor when it comes to selling the apartments in a condominium which he has constructed for residential purpose. If the title on the property is not clear, he will find it absolutely difficult to sell it to the public.

The construction company has to ensure that he clears the dues of the contractors should also ensure that the contractors are also paying to the sub-contractors because if they are not paid then they can also adopt the same methodology and create issues for the company. The sub-contractor can also place a lien on the project and can put a halt to the sale proceeds. It has been seen that liens are ideally placed as a last resort when contractors do not see any other option to get their money they go for placing liens. Once a lien is placed on any construction project, it gets recorded in the credit rating of the company. This means that credit rating of the company gets hampered which eventually affects the overall goodwill of the company. Construction companies do not want to play with their goodwill and therefore they do not want to take any potential risk by not paying their creditors or contractors.

Further to this, a dip in their credit rating can also cause problems to them when it comes to getting loans from banks. Construction companies with poor credit rating do not easily get loans and if at all they manage to get it from any financial institution then the interest rates will be really high. This in turn will have a negative impact on their business. They will never want such things to happen and therefore should try everything to avoid getting a lien on their project.

There have been several instances where construction companies have paid the contractors but they in turn have failed to pay other concerned parties to the project. This can be a big pain for the project owner because here he may not know all the parties who are associated with the contract and then all of a sudden you get to know that someone has placed a lien as they are not being paid. However, you check your records and see that you have paid all the parties involved in the transaction on time. You can file a complaint and state that you are clear in paying everybody and can disclose the records in front of the concerned authority. But this is unquestionably a big pain and in order to avoid this, you should pick contractors of good reputation.

Working with a construction company is no less than an adventure. Each day you will experience a new thing in your job. You will come across instances where you do not know how to act or react. However, you learn to deal with things slowly and steadily. For an operator, who has to work on different kinds of heavy equipment gets to learn a lot of things from he does. He finds his life to be more adventurous than anybody else who is a part of the industry. He has to work on uneven paths, at times need to dig deep inside the ground and do not find anybody else other than himself and when it comes to operate in a forest, it then becomes more adventurous for him. Dealing with different types of situations is a part of his work and he needs to ensure that he does the job diligently so that he does not end it up in an accident.

Well it was all about the real operator. Now there is something where a person who belongs to a different industry can also try his hands on heavy equipment and get the feel of an operator. All of us at some point of time in our childhood dreamt of playing with these big machines but it was told to us that this is not a child’s play and we should keep ourselves away from it. But that was a thing of past. There are heavy equipment adventures camps where a person who wants to enjoy the thrill that an operator usually does while operating a machine can get into one such camp and drive the machine. It is somewhat similar to heavy equipment amusement park but certainly not the same. It is claimed to be more adventurous than what a person can experience in an amusement park.

Take your friends along:-

You can plan out a weekend with your friends to a heavy equipment adventure site. You can speak about what kind of activities you want to do that requires involvement of your pals. The concerned authorities at the site will tailor made the activity for you as per your choice and will ensure that you along with your friends have a blast and enjoy your day to the fullest. The support guys will provide you with tasks and will instruct you as to how you can go about with it. These instructions will be given to all your friends who have to complete the task in a given timeframe. This can be quite challenging for people who have never done this before and may find it to be quite thrilling.

Perfect for corporate team building:-

Corporate companies can gift a day of leisure to their hard working employees in one such heavy equipment adventure site. Here the people of a company who perhaps work in different departments and do not even know each other will come together and work as a team to finish a task. This can be a good learning for the employees who will get to know people from other departments and will develop a rapport.

Things are not always rosy for any industry and they all have to go through some rough patches at different phases. You try to pull out the details of an industry for the last two decades and which is doing phenomenally well now. You will be astonished to see that it has gone through several bad phases in those 2 decades and this reveals many things. First is not every industry generates profits at all times and when it experiences the bad phase, it has the potential to wipe off many companies that are associated with it. The second is the most important point and it talks about how to overcome the bad phase systematically. Now focusing on the construction segment, it is also considered to be an industry that has generated profits in huge figures and the profit numbers have been drawing more people linking up with this industry.

As we say people come and go but the one who manage to stay can become a successful business owner. As a matter of fact, staying in this industry is a bit difficult as people have mended their ways after making some money and mostly losing everything they had. So what ideally important is to stay afloat during turbulent times and you can do that only if you have managed to set up contingency fund for your business.

Normally, we set up such contingency fund to take care of any emergency in our personal lives. Knowing that the future is unknown, these funds are said to be maintained at all times irrespective how eager you are to buy a luxury for yourself. Contingency funds are never meant to fulfill your luxurious needs and people need to understand this before it gets too late for them. In the same context, contingency funds are quite important when it comes to tackling an emergency.

Keep increasing your contingency fund:-

At the beginning of the construction business, you must have allocated a certain amount towards the contingency fund. But as you move ahead in life and simultaneously in your business you need to ensure that you keep increasing the amount and save more in your kitty. While you grow your business, the risk factor also increases manifolds and therefore it becomes a must to keep increasing the money in your emergency kitty.

Do not use contingency fund to meet business requirements:-

Contingency funds are not meant to meet your business requirements like buying heavy equipment or paying wages to your employees. It is there to take care of difficult times only. You have to make sure that you avail sufficient amount to meet other expenses. However, when the business is not doing well and you are cash crunched and need to pay the bank loan perhaps that is the moment when you should take out money from the kitty. You can consider the situation where you do not have work in hand and you got to pay your dues to different institutions as an emergency one and can make use of your kitty to meet those needs.